Song of Songs for Love and Longing

I have often dismissed the Song of Solomon. In fact, I used to think that you are better off reading some sonnets, and that the non-Christian literature has much more to offer on this topic if you want to read great love poems ranging from the works of Shakespeare to Dante, Lord Byron to John Donne, Coleridge to Chaucer. Found towards the last section of the Tanakh (תָּנָ״ךְ) in the Old Testament, I have wondered how on earth did the Song of Solomon make its way into the bible immediately after the wisdom in the book of Ecclesiastes and before the great prophets in the book of Isaiah, and why?

A random conversation with a friend last night over drinks led me to pick up the Song of Solomon and read it from its beginning to the end. Whilst not without some will power but at least willingly albeit grudgingly, I decided to give it a second chance since someone else clearly seems to resonate with it and sees its beauty. Being one of the five scrolls or megillot ( חמש מגילות) traditionally read publicly in synagogues, the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs or Canticle of Canticles) used to be sung with cantillation. On its face, the eight chapters in this book of the bible show no interest in the covenant or the God of Israel, nor do they explore wisdom like the preceding books of poetry. Instead, the Song of Solomon gives voice to two lovers yearning for each other in melodic harmony. Although accepting of what is written, as someone who is not quite that romantic at heart, who stays in the sweet comfort of mutual affection and who tries to run away from anything that may lead to neediness or a whirlwind of emotional turbulence, the Song of Solomon made no sense to me in what it teaches us from a biblical perspective. Until now.

Christian interpretations of the Song of Solomon vary widely, from the view that it describes covenantal love of Christ for his ’bride', the church, to the medieval mysticism that construes it to apply to the love between Christ and the human soul, somehow. An interpretation that has perhaps gained the most credence amongst modern scholars is, put simply, that the Song of Solomon celebrates the joy and goodness of human love between the sexes as well as the sense of inner fulfillment and harmony with God's creation that arise from such love.

Herman Bavinck has explored "an idea of the richest religious and ethical significance", namely that Adam was not created alone. "As a man and by himself, he was incomplete...The creation of humankind in God's image was only completed on the sixth day, when God created both man and woman in union with each other, in his image." In his book, Bavinck states it is not good that man should be alone (Gen 2:18), nor is it good that man and woman should be alone. Upon the two of them, God immediately pronounced the blessing of multiplication (Gen 1:28). "Not the man alone, nor the man and woman together, but only the whole of humanity is the fully developed image of God, his children, his offspring." The image of God is too rich for it to be fully realised in a single human being, however richly gifted that human being may be.

So Eve was created from Adam and Adam can be the first principle of the whole race where the unity of the human race could be rooted in the unity of its origin, as united and epitomised in one head where Christ is the head of the church in the covenant of grace and with Adam as the head of mankind in the covenant of works. The woman is a partaker of human nature and of the image of God, and she represents that nature and image in accordance with her own nature and in a manner uniquely her own, alongside man and in solidarity with man. She is 'from man' 'for the man' and 'the glory of man' yet not entirely independent of man. The man, though head of his wife and the image and glory of God because he in the first place is the bearer of dominion, is nevertheless incomplete without the woman.

In contrast to the sometimes pagan fascination of the maternal presence of procreation and fertility, and the fact that biologically man comes from woman, the bible paints a poignant picture of equality and order in the world of man, woman and God "for as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things [are] of God." (1 Corinthian 11: 12, King James Version).

So as the Song of Songs takes us back to Adam and Eve with a myriad of rich imagery of the Ein Gedi, the forests and the foliage, the brambles and the blossoms, the fruits and the apple tree, that reminds us of the garden planted eastward in Eden by God where he put the man he had formed and the woman made from man and brought unto the man, I will leave you with two verses which stood out upon giving the book a real 'second chance' that it deserves in the Song of Solomon 8:6-7 (King James Version).

"Set me as a seal upon thine heart,
     as a seal upon thine arm:
for love is strong as death;
     jealousy is cruel as the grave:
the coals thereof are coals of fire,
    which hath a most vehment flame.
Many waters cannot quench love,
    neither can the floods drown it:
if a man would give all the substance of his house for love,
    it would utterly be contemned."

This piece has paraphrased a small number of online sources not cited here in addition to Herman Bavinck. All moral rights (including copyright) belong to the author except to the extent quoted, referred to or otherwise subsisting in the works of others dated earlier than the date of this piece. The author does not and does not intend to infringe any such moral rights in any way!